Coming from Nazca to Arequipa by car it is worth turning left and visiting some of the most interesting rock drawings I have ever seen. The site is called Toro Muerto (Dead Bull), but this name could be changed to almost any other animal - nothing can survive in this desert except perhaps a camel - but there are no camels in the New World. The petroglyphs are close to the village of Corire and the fertile valley of the Camana River, but in this part of Peru only a few rivers are suitable for life. It is enough to drive a kilometer or two to the side and you can meet there at most sand and rocks.

There is a kind of information center in Corire where you have to buy tickets and get a guide to the petroglyphs. However, we passed this place and got to Toro Muerto without paying anything. The road is quite well marked, there is even a parking lot and a shelter with a suggested path. It is good to more or less stick to this path, because it was led next to the most spectacular petroglyphs. The greatest joy, however, is to bounce off it and look for drawings on your own. And there are hundreds of them, some very large, others noticeable only after climbing the rock. The place is delightful, although I was surprised by the dating of these drawings - they were created between 500 and 1000 AD, at a time when much more advanced things were created in Peru centuries earlier, including wonderful ceramics. Comparable drawings elsewhere in the world (e.g. Hail in Saudi Arabia) were made several thousand years earlier. So this is a rare case when I have no opinion whether this place should be inscribed.

Right next to Toro Muerto there is another curiosity - Jurassic Park Querulpa. At first glance, the place looks like a less-than-successful dummy amusement park for kids - you go up among life-sized plastic dinosaur casts. But perseverance will be rewarded - at the very top there are real dinosaur footprints.